iOS15 - Podcast downloads not completing and stuck

OK - I know that the podcasts app is rubbish and my expectations of how it might work might be unreasonable and that the problems I’m having might actually be features. Having said that, it’s being a real pain at the moment and maybe someone can help.

I spend a fair amount of time outside internet coverage and I download podcasts to my phone so I can listen when I’m offline. I’ve been getting a lot of “…this podcast is unavailable…” errors on episodes that I thought I’d downloaded and I’ve been managing this by manually checking stuff before I travel and downloading them manually. I decided I ought to fix it and a bit of research seemed to suggest that deleting the app and re-installing was the best bet. Since then I’ve had nothing but problems and based on my experiences I would strongly recommend not doing this because I’ve gone from an annoying situation where a few podcasts wouldn’t play to one where I’ve got no podcasts at all on my phone.

The main issue now is that podcasts won’t download. They either get to within a MB or two of completion and stop, or they get all the way and stop. So the Downloading screen is a list of podcasts with the purple download circle complete, or almost complete, and that’s it (see post below for screen shot). It stays that way for hours and the podcasts never complete downloading. I’ve tried many combinations of deleting the app and re-installing, logging out of my Apple account and hard resets. If I close the app and re-open it it starts the downloads from scratch and the same thing happens all over again. Wifi is working, internet is working. The podcasts that get stuck on the iPhone have all downloaded successfully on my Mac in parallel with not loading on the iPhone, so it isn’t a problem with the servers or the phone's connection. Anyone got any ideas other than restoring the whole phone or using a different podcast app?

The second issue is that downloading individual episodes doesn’t work. Long tap and “Download Episosde” doesn’t work. Tapping the down arrow doesn’t work. Tapping the three dot menu then “Download Episode” doesn’t work. Other menu items work OK - like mark as played, share episode, etc.

A third, and relatively minor (though majorly annoying) issue is that of “synching” podcasts across devices. Having deleted and reinstalled the iPhone app, it now has about 2000 podcast episodes on it which it claims are unplayed. This is not true - looking at my Mac there are about 40 iPods across all shows that I have not listened to. Both Mac and iPhone Podcast apps are set to synch across device, so what, exactly, do I have to do to synch the play-state of the podcasts? Anyone have a clue?

iOS 15.3.1

Thanks in advance for any help.